The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips (not to be confused with The Flaming Chalice) are the greatest band ever, of all time, having ever existed at any spatial coordinates in the universe, or in short the Ump-a-lumpas. This is God's Honest Truth sent down to us mortals by His Eternal Word in the form of "The Soft Bullett" and "Clouds Eat Metal" and "Zoinks!" Even "Weeaboo Battles a Drunk Robot" and "At War with Iraq." Now don't forget the Butthole Surfers, mentioned later in this description.

The band is originally from Oklahoma City, the world's gnarliest shit hole. They did acid a couple of times and played really loud and poorly executed music that they ripped off of the Butthole Surfers, a band that Wayne will say is cool, but everyone knows they will never be as cool as The Flaming lips. Then Jesus gave them superpowers, making them the greatest rock band of all time, ever.

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Wayne Coyne. He has a beard now and everything. For some reason, he forces all his bandmates to dress like Furries. Believed to drink (yes, drink) a pint of acid every day. Also looks suspiciously like Jose Mourinho.

Michael Ivins. Wayne's beleaguered sidekick, usually seen sitting in a chair, dressed like a Furry.

Ronald Jones. A Maori who was outcast because he refused to get those weird tattoos. After a fit of depression and a few guitar lessons, he moved to America and was captured by Wayne on a hunting trip. It took Ronald two albums to escape the band.

Brian Wilson. I'm sure he doesn't actually know where he is. At any time. Ever.

Willy Wonka. This was before he pulled a Michael Jackson with the ump-a-lumpas.

Kliph Scurlock. He left because of 'creative differences'. But he was really fired over an indecent involving 8 tons of cantaloupe and 3 young Korean women. I'm guessing he has a penis and a at least 1/2 an ear.

It was initially rumored that the band got their name from an incident in which Chacka Khan's pants caught fire, however, The Flaming Lips got their name from inspiration of one Dave Benson-Phillips. While watching an episode of "Get Your Own Back", Wayne and Michael imaged Dave's 200 muscle filled lips as almost being on fire thus the name was created. Dave did not demand any of the royalties for his inspiring lips, only that Wayne had to supply him with cocaine once a week.

In the days when the only prevailing genre of music was "hair metal", a young and kind of creepy-in-a-cool-way guy named Wayne was cooking shit and dumping ashtray remnants into the food at Long John Silvers. He was content with the idea of being a slacker-stoner like everyone else at the time, and as he believed experience is life's best teacher, he dropped out of school. Then one day a couple crazy bastards who were victims of the times, and probably retarded, came into LJS to kill Wayne and his staff. Wayne took the guns out of their hands and said "What now, assholes?". They shit themselves and ran away in terror. As Wayne was driving home from this life changing experience in his magic bus of awesome, he saw a guy with lots of needles in his arms playing the drums as though he were possessed by the devil. Coincidentally, across the street was this guy who sported some attention grabbing hair, carrying around a bass and asking random people if they wanted to hear him play the theme from Fraggle Rock. Wayne knew what he had to do. He leaped out of the bus while it was still moving, physically beat on Steve Drozd until reaching sobriety, threw the drum set into the still moving magic bus, continuing to yell profanity towards Steve. Whilst doing this he dashed across the street, grabbed Michael by the arm and interrupted the cursing streak by whispering "Come with me if you want to live!". If there's one thing Mr. Ivins likes, it's being alive. And Clamato. Oh, how he loves him some Clamato. Anyway, yeah, that's basically it. Steve reportedly got clean, Michael went bald on purpose and wears shades because he is that cool, Wayne made himself look like some immortal wizard dude in a well maintained leisure suit. That's it. Wait...OH! And Kliph? Uhhh, yeah, sure. I mean, he is part of the band now, yeah. And they got their powers and are the greatest band, etc, etc, etc. There, you have the whole story now. You're welcome!

First, he drops acid, and hunts down Michael Ivins and torments him in some way: sometimes he screams, "WAKE UP MICHAEL!" at the top of his lungs, sometimes he sends his dogs after him, sometimes he drops a poisonous spider on him. When he wants to write a song about a giraffe, he gets a giraffe to trample Michael and records his reactions, in the name of Science.

Next, he comes up with a gimmick. Maybe the song can only be played on twenty CD players, an 8-track, a DVD player, a dozen highly trained Turkish eunuchs, and an antique player piano simultaneously. Maybe the song has been bounced off the surface of Mars, or is sung while in a giant rubber ball. All sorts of freaky shit.

The Flaming Lips are known for their exceptionally strange live shows. They frequently use smoke machines, balloons, rabbit suits, zithers, zambonis, Peyote plants, ugly girls in bikinis, a recreation of Mount Rushmore in Styrofoam, and even some guitars at recent shows. Some shows in the 2001-2004 tour for Zoinks! also included clones of Bono The implementation of the world's largest mirror ball and an actual UFO spacecraft once piloted by fat Elvis have occurred as a result of the audience feeling that the band was still "too grounded" in reality. In one tragic concert the appearance of The Flaming Lips' arch enemies, The Freezing Lips, resulted in an epic battle. It caused the death of 3000-21 people and the durability of Wayne Coyne's Gallant Flamberge of the Whale to drop to 5/85.